<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Hurt Comfort Dream SMP My Beloved - A series of short stories by oddmara</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29703156">Hurt Comfort Dream SMP My Beloved - A series of short stories</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddmara/pseuds/oddmara'>oddmara</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Best Friends, Coping, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Feels, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Late at Night, Manberg Festival on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), The Disc War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-15 16:49:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,065</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29703156</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/oddmara/pseuds/oddmara</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>All the small moments that you'd wish would happen on stream all gathered and written out here. Niki dealing with Wilbur's death. Tubbo and Tommy talking about the festival and the exile. Tommy confronting Phil on Doomsday. Suggestions are open!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Niki | Nihachu &amp; Wilbur Soot, Tubbo &amp; Tommyinnit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. If a crater is a nation, I don’t want to be a citizen</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Niki stared as the last flames of the city went out, as the ashes of a life that once existed all flew beyond her. She wandered where they’d end up. The last remains of a home, of what they foolishly called a nation, scattered all over the world. It felt hopeful in a way. A nation that even in death keeps existing everywhere, nature, trees, flowers, blooming from its remains, while the place where it once stood exists as nothing more than a crater.</p><p><br/>Beyond her gaze, people were moving aimlessly. Collecting remains of explosives yearning to go off, belongings that might be saved, books and documents and other official things that were the only proof left that a country used to stand there. Collecting bodies. Her friends collecting the remains of their other friends in the remains of the only place that they have ever called home. Amongst them, she knew, Will’s body lay, killed by his own father, by her own friend.</p><p><br/>“Two infanticides have been committed today.” She let the whispers leave her lips, join the ashes in their flight. “Phil has killed you, and you have killed your child. A nation you nurtured from its birth to its last breaths, which you also took.” And yet she couldn’t blame him. L’Manberg, their small nation, wasn’t gone because he had blown it up. From the moment Schlatt became leader instead of him, from the moment he exiled him for a treason he didn’t commit, from the moment he lost all hope, that’s the moment L’Manberg stopped existing. Because L’Manberg wasn’t a nation as much as it was a group of people taking refuge under Will’s wing.</p><p><br/>She refused to see the body. She didn’t even know if they held a funeral for him. Would a man that destroyed an entire nation and betrayed all of his friends, a man that went insane from power and for power deserve a funeral? Maybe not. Would a man that created an entire nation for his friends to feel safe in, a place to protect and raise his son in, a place that he would have done everything to keep safe even if it meant destroying it, deserve a funeral? Maybe so. She hated the man he had become, so she wandered the forest in the search of a place where she could build a memorial to the person he once was.</p><p>“Will…” she gasped, but nothing came after. Only tears and regrets. “When did you finally leave, Will? When did it all break? Was it when Tubbo died? Was it seeing Techno blowing him up to pieces, to smithereens-“ she sobbed, the memory still fresh in her head. Another useless death under Schlatt’s rule. Another death that they still hadn’t had the time to mourn. She let the tears fall silently. “Oh, Tubbo.” She let her head rest on a tree facing the small memorial. “His death is also on your shoulders, heavier than the death of an entire nation. Tommy will only ever forgive you for one of them.”<br/>She didn’t want to think of what was going through Tommy’s head in that moment. In the rubble of a city he built alongside his brother and best friend, she wondered if he finally allowed himself to cry. The two people he made himself stay strong for laid at his feet. She pushed the image out of her head and pulled out her journal instead. Someone would talk to him. Someone will help him manage his grief. She had her own grief to navigate, and a letter to write to no one in particular, to a person that might one day find this small book that told the story of L’Manberg from beginning to end. She took a deep breath before starting to scribble the words:</p><p> </p><p>On this day, 16th of November XXXX, a nation and its founder have perished. While people will start rebuilding and life there will go on, it shall do so without me. All that has made this place be a home no longer exists, besides a son without a father and a boy without a brother. It’s no longer a place of hope, but one of sorrow, and of people who don’t know how to mourn, already trying to rebuild on the bones of a nation that hasn’t even had the time to rest. I would miss my home, but it’s already been destroyed. I would miss my friends but they are already dead. Remaining here would mean looking for ghosts that only wish to sleep. This notebook, last remaining piece of history of a place that soon will be no more of a memory to the people that helped create it and a myth to those that will settle where it once stood, will remain here, next to its leader’s grave, one of my dearest friends that maybe didn’t deserve a grave but that got one anyway. A man that in his madness still found in his heart to be ready to sacrifice himself for the people he loved. A man that was kind and loving, so much that it led him to madness. If you so happen to find this book, know that my name is Niki, and that I am one of many who used to live in the place once called L’Manberg that has now become nothing more than a crater. Good luck to you that finds this book, and goodbye. Maybe we’ll get to meet one day or maybe we won’t. Still, I wish you happiness and love.</p><p> </p><p>Carefully, she closed the notebook and buried it beneath the dirt and stones that made the memorial, and got up from her place. She knew someone finding this place was inevitable, the trees of this forest being cut then rebuilt endlessly, much like the nation she once was a part of. She hoped they wouldn’t disturb it. They owed Will at least that much. They owed her at least that much. Her who had been there since the beginning, who had loved and fought and lived for this nation that never loved her back.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The one thing a boy and a nation have in common is being set aflame</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Silent night where Tubbo's burn hurts too much to let him speak, so it's Tommy that does the talking. Doomsday wasn't the only thing left unaddressed between the two.</p>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Through a small hole in the roof he could see the outside. The shining stars of the night accompanied by a travelling moon and the void they called the sky. From his makeshift bed, he watched them all. Him and Tommy went around fixing most of the holes in the house, cracks and missing pieces piled up after months and months of the house being abandoned. Two exiles, two spans of time where all the cobwebs in the world had time to form. But he insisted on keeping this one as it was. The view was nice for moments like these.</p><p>               Deep heavy breaths, an attempt to fill his lungs with air instead of pain, filled the silence of the night. He synchronised his breathing with the movement of the leaves, floating peacefully up and down in a dance with the wind. The panic he felt in the beginning was gone, the memory of the first few nights when he couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t breathe. His heart wasn’t rushing, his brain wasn’t running. Panicking is a curse for one that can’t move an inch without crying, and he had broken free from it. Still, he hoped it wouldn’t last long. Even if he got used to it, the pain of the burns never got better.</p><p>               The fresh air of the night helped with his breathing. The cold breeze helped ease the pain. He let out a small yelp as he accidentally grazed his skin while pulling at his shirt. The lightness of the shirt was heavy enough to make him feel like he was suffocating, and the fabric touching the skin only made the pain be worse. His hands shaking, he struggled undoing the small buttons that he had replaced so many times to a point that none of them matched anymore.</p><p>               “God damnit.” He whispered. He never expected the pain to last this long, to leave and come back as it pleased. Mainly at night, but sometimes in the day, sometimes while he gave speeches and could not allow himself to waver, his position of power, his friends, his enemies already seeing him as too weak. As someone to overlook. As someone to pity. He didn’t want to add another reason to the never-ending list of adjectives that people used for him. He didn’t want to seem like a premonition. The boy blown up, whose curse expanded so much that even his nation got blown up. Twice. But who was left to let down at this point? He already lost everything, all that he cared about and all that he didn’t. A small pang in his heart, barely distinguishable from the pain in his chest poked at him silently. He’d lost almost everything.</p><p>               He listened as in the other room Tommy snored. The image of the tall tower flashed before his eyes and the pang in his heart only got stronger. A tower that he built in every single way but physically. What did he do to him? A question he directed to both himself and Dream, as Tommy’s voice echoed in his head “Do you have any idea what he did to me?”</p><p>               He didn’t. He didn’t have a clue as to what happened there. All he saw was the aftermath. And it scared him. After the fight at the community house, he didn’t bring it up again, his own brain trying to imagine what had happened already hard enough to bear. He didn’t even know how they would talk about it. They hadn’t even talked about Wilbur’s death.  </p><p>               A small sob left his mouth, unexpected, and he wasn’t sure if it was because of the pain or because of Tommy. All he knew was that he couldn’t stop another one from coming, and another, and another, until his face was drowning in tears.</p><p>               “Tubbo?” Tommy’s voice, disoriented, in the dark. He didn’t reply, the sobs and tears making it harder and harder for him to breathe. Beyond the door to his room he heard the sound of a flint and steel, light seeping underneath it, and he waited as the door slowly opened to reveal a disoriented looking Tommy.</p><p>               “Tubbo?” Tommy’s voice changed from confusion to concern in a split-second, frozen in place at the sight before him, his brain focused only on the image of his friend standing there, gripping his blanket as tears ran down his face, the only expression surpassing his tears being the one of pain.</p><p>               “Hi.” He managed to push out between breaths and sobs. He reached for Tommy’s hand wordlessly, and Tommy rushed to grab it. He preferred holding onto it rather than the thin sheets of the bed, that he’d already felt rip and still needed whole to cover himself. They stayed like that for a while, Tubbo’s heavy breathing the only sound filling the room, Tommy’s eyes looking anywhere besides to Tubbo. Tubbo’s eyes moving from Tommy to the window to Tommy again.</p><p>               “I’m alright. You can look Tommy, it’s fine.” He said, when the pain eased up enough to let him breathe and speak at the same time. Yet the boy refused to turn to him.</p><p>               “I promise I’m ok.” He pushed himself up as best as he could, Tommy immediately coming to his aid. He could feel the boy’s fear of touching him, pulling away as fast as he came to his aid. He wondered what he saw when he looked at him. “It’s just pain. Chronic pain. It comes and goes and sometimes it just hurts more than I expect it would.” Probably the small yellow cage.</p><p>               Tommy took a deep breath, his voice shaky.</p><p>               “Is there anything I can do to help?”</p><p>               He let out a small laugh.</p><p>               “Nope. I’m stuck like this for a while.”</p><p>               Tommy sighed, finally looking at him. He let himself sit cross-legged on the floor, his hands playing with the bottom of his shirt.</p><p>               “Do you wanna talk about it?”</p><p>               “About what? It’s just a wound like all of them.”</p><p>               “But it’s not! After death, it shouldn’t hurt anymore, should it? This is all Techno’s fault. It’s always been his fault! I am going to—”</p><p>               “I don’t blame Techno, Tommy.”</p><p>                “I know you don’t and it’s dumb. You should. He killed you Tubbo! And as if that wasn’t bad enough, I find out now that he also did this to you—”</p><p>               “I also tried to kill him, Tommy.”</p><p>               “But you weren’t on the same side! You didn’t consider each other friends! And you—It’s not you that tried to kill him, it was Fundy and Quackity—”</p><p>               Tubbo sighed before looking towards Tommy with a small smile. “It’s almost like I was peer pressured.”</p><p>               Tommy’s mouth opened and then closed again, ready to protest then thinking better of it. No matter how much Tommy might hate it, Tubbo and Techno weren’t all that different.</p><p>               “That’s bullshit.” Tommy finally mumbled under his breath, and Tubbo couldn’t help but laugh, which only made way for a gasp of pain.</p><p>               “Tubbo—”</p><p>               Tubbo lifted his palm as he gritted his teeth, his eyes tightly shut trying his best to cope with the pain. He could hear Tommy shuffling, wanting to do anything and knowing there was just no way to help, forcing himself to focus on anything else than his best friend’s pain. Instead, he looked as he suffered, staring at the old burn with hateful remorse. A crater in his skin just like the crater in the land where L’Manberg used to lay.</p><p>               “I’m sorry.”</p><p>               Tubbo couldn’t do anything but slightly shake his head. He had nothing to apologise for.</p><p>               “I am though. If I hadn’t called Techno, if I hadn’t asked him to help us—all of this wouldn’t have happened. He was never our friend. From the beginning to the end, all Techno did was cause destruction. He helped Dream more than he ever helped us.”</p><p>               Dream. It always came back to Dream. And with his name always came the small waver in his voice, barely noticeable, barely even there. And in his head, his voice echoed, <em>Do you even know what he did to me?</em></p><p>               “What did he do to you?” he pushed through gritted teeth, the pain slowly easing out.</p><p>               “Huh?”</p><p>               “What did Dream do to you, Tommy?” his chest was heavy, his heart was heavier, and as he spoke the words he could feel a knot forming in his throat, not helping with his breathing.</p><p>               “I—” he took a shaking breath. “Now?”</p><p>               He nodded.</p><p>               “Now.”</p><p>               “Are you sure? I don’t want you to—It’s nothing—”</p><p>               “Tommy.” His voice filled the room. It was the loudest his voice had gone that night. “We… we never talk. We never—” he gasped, taking a shaking breath of air “we never address these things, and they’ve been piling up so high and I’m afraid one day they’ll topple and I don’t know what we’ll do then. I almost… I almost lost you once because I thought you hated me. I— I thought you—” he let his voice trail off. Another breath.</p><p>               “I almost did.” He replied, and Tubbo’s heart stopped.</p><p>               Silence.</p><p>               A whisper.</p><p>               “Why?”</p><p>               It was Tommy’s turn to take a deep breath.</p><p>               “When we left, Dream took all of my things and blew them up. He did that every day. I’d get something, and he’d blow it up the next day. But at least I had something to do every day. Mostly I was all alone any way, so having something to do was nice. I didn’t… I liked being able to focus on something else than the exile. And when I wasn’t alone, it was because he was there. He was—” he paused, searching for his words, or maybe searching for how he actually felt about Dream. Tubbo wasn’t sure he knew.</p><p>               “He was my friend. He was always there for me, when no one else was. And we had fun… most of the time. He made sure it remained that way. Him being my only friend I mean.  He didn’t deliver the invites to the party, he almost killed Ghostbur for… being my friend, I guess. I didn’t deserve friends. No one cared anymore, and the one person that did almost got killed for it.”</p><p>               He remembered Ghostbur reappearing after a few months. Carefree as always, smiling as usual. Telling them in the happiest voice that he’d almost melted in the rain. He’d never known it was Dream’s doing. He wondered where Ghostbur had gone now.</p><p>               “Then he discovered my small hidden stash,” he went on. “Some things I just wanted to keep to myself. Some things I cared about. And he blew them up. And he blew Logsted up. And my tent, and the Christmas tree and the storage system… Everything. And then told me I wasn’t allowed to leave there, no one was allowed to visit me anymore, and that he’d stop coming too. I was alone.” He stopped. Tubbo didn’t have to look at him to see how lost in thought he was.</p><p>               “Honestly, it wasn’t that bad it was just…”  he drifted off, not sure how to go on. Tubbo not knowing how to answer.</p><p>               “I’m sorry.” he finally said.</p><p>               “It’s fine.” Tommy replied.</p><p>               It wasn’t fine. None of it was fine. Nothing that had happened ever since they founded L’Manberg was fine, yet they had to pretend it was. They couldn’t do much more than that. From a killed brother and best friend that went mad, to a nation destroyed so many times, to so many traitors amidst their ranks, to an enemy who had fought alongside them once upon a time. They had to act as if it was fine, because if they didn’t how could they even hope to trust people? How could they hope to trust each-other? Tubbo knew that even as it was it was hard enough.</p><p>               “You’re here now.”</p><p>               Tommy had decided to trust him blindly even after the exile.</p><p>               “I am.”</p><p>               He had decided to do anything for him if it meant he would be better again.</p><p>               “Please don’t leave again.”</p><p>               He had left so many times. Pogtopia. The exile. He was tired of being alone. Of him being alone.</p><p>               “As long as you don’t leave first.”</p><p>               He smiled.</p><p>               “I won’t.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>And now Tommy is dead and this is irrelevant and also so much more sad.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>